State secondary education: less funds for more students?

Abstract

The article provides an overview of some structural and conjunctural challenges for the funding of State education, particularly secondary education (the 3 years of schooling offered after the 8-year period of compulsory education), showing that the trend of governments has been to spend less per pupil, despite the official discourses exhalting the quality of education. The structural challenges examined include direct and indirect privatism of government policies, the non-compliance of a constitucional requirement that a certain percentage of taxes be invested in education, the loss of funds linked to education caused by inflation and fiscal policies, and the little reliability of Audit Offices. Among the conjunctural challenges we have examined the Fundef (a fund set up by the federal government to finance compulsory education), which leaves out the secondary education; the reduced federal contribution to the secondary education; and the fragility of the proposal contained in the 10-year National Education Plan and the 'judicious' use of public money. Finally, we examine the perspectives of education funding in Lula's government, which are not apparently bright in view of the emphasis of his government on the 'fiscal adjustment', the result of which was a reduction in real terms of the funds for education in 2003. We have also analysed the virtues and limits of the Fundeb (the Basic Education Fund).